The Death Box (11 page)

“You’re Ryder, I take it. I’m Deb Clayton. Pleased to meet you and all that. You found the vic?”

“Me and Gershwin over there.”

“Looks pretty cut and dried. Or maybe slit and bled out. You take your look?”

“Yep. All yours, Miz Clayton.”

“It’s Deb. And welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Fickle.”

I looked out the window to see a Miami-Dade Medical Examiner van pulling up. The two departments shared the facilities of the MDME, the FCLE having staff pathologists. From here on, the scene was the province of the evidence pros and medical folks.

Gershwin and I headed out to canvass neighbors, finding the closest one was visiting relatives in North Carolina. No one knew much about Carosso and I got the feeling it was one of those neighborhoods where everyone has secrets and won’t poke into yours if you don’t poke into theirs.

We watched the ambulance take Paul Carosso on his final journey and headed back to the office, happy to find two desks, two desk chairs, two chairs for sitting, one low couch, two file cabinets and a whiteboard. Each desk had a computer terminal linked to a printer and both phones worked. A box of office supplies was in the corner.

We sat and started digging into Carosso’s financial records. An hour of calls to various banking voices revealed that two grand had been deposited in Carosso’s account a year ago. Though it wasn’t much, it was an anomaly, most deposits being paycheck range: three to five hundred every couple weeks.

Gershwin leaned back with purple skate shoes on his desk and his hands jammed in the front pockets of his paint-tight black jeans. “Maybe Carosso got a big payoff and spent it on something, had two grand left.”

“I don’t think the guy owned anything that cost more than fifty bucks.”

My phone rang, Morningstar. “Hello, Doctor,” I said in my most charming and inoffensive voice. “What can I do for—”

“I need those fibers tested now, not yesterday …”

“Excuse me, Doctor?”

“Wake up, Diego! Get me more one-quart evidence bags …”

I realized that Morningstar had dialed, then started issuing orders, forgetting the phone in her hand.

“One goddamn Coke,” she bayed. “How hard is that?”

“YO!” I yelled. “DOCTOR MORNINGSTAR!”

A beat, and I heard the phone bump her cheek. “Yeah, Ryder. I hear you. Whatdaya want?”

“You called me.”

“Oh yeah. How about you haul your ass to the site?”

“Haul my what where?”

A pause while she reconsidered her tone. “Can you stop by, Detective? We’ve got some new information you’ll find interesting.”

We booked to the site and entered the tent – IDs predominant on our chests – and found Morningstar at the upper bank of examination tables. She looked up as we approached.

“I heard you just sent a body to the morgue, Ryder. Connected to this case?”

“Can’t say yet. If it is, it adds a new urgency.”

“Doctor Wilkens will handle the autopsy since I seem to be living here. And to that end, we have another complete body extraction.”

I saw a body on her side on a reinforced table, almost fetal, legs drawn up, one hand floating in the air, the other below, the spine and rib cage compressed by huge force. Her preserved face projected forward, mouth wide below a straight nose, the empty eye sockets like twin screams.

It was the woman who had called to me from the stone, the one trying to swim free. I knew it was an illusion, that her lifeless body had pressed against the wall of the cistern, her face and hand wedging between stones lining the cistern, eluding the concrete and appearing frozen while swimming.

Morningstar turned to me. “The big reason I called you here? I’m wondering about the serial-killer line Delmara is pushing.”

“Why’s that?”

“So far we’ve pulled nine skulls, seven females and two males. Several skulls provided a look at dentition. A lot of decay, but the teeth display the kind of contemporary dentistry done by first-world dentists on charity missions.”

“Meaning?”

“I’m getting there. BELT!”

A tech sprinted over and set a brown leather belt in Morningstar’s outstretched palm. The belt was crusted with cement, but a section near the corroded buckle had been cleaned.

“You can’t see the words with the naked eye, but under a microscope we’ve made out
HECHO EN HONDURAS
– made in Honduras. BRACELET!” Morningstar barked and the belt became a silver-colored ID bracelet, the opening heartbreakingly small. She handed me a magnifying glass and pointed to a cleaned area of the bracelet. I squinted at faint letters etched into cheap potmetal.

“T-e-g-u …”

“Tegucigalpa,” Morningstar said. “A souvenir from the capital of Honduras. And for the frosting on the cake …” Morningstar snapped her long fingers and the bracelet became a three-centimeter-square piece of jewelry.

“There’s this, a tin medallion stamped with the Nuestra Señora de Supaya, the patroness of Honduras.”

“A serial psycho who targets Hispanics?” I said, my mind racing. “Mainly women? That’s what you’re saying we have here?” I was springing to conclusions: a killer from the same culture moving in areas he knew, using the native language … But Morningstar had other experience and shook her head.

“How much human trafficking did you see in Mobile, Detective?”

“Almost zero.”

“South Florida is the entry point for a fair amount of human cargo from the Caribbean and the Southern Hemisphere. Europe, even. I think we’re seeing a delivery that went wrong.”

“This trafficking …” I said, suddenly feeling like the last runner in the Boston Marathon. “Where can I find out more?”

17

Morningstar made me an appointment with an expert. The next morning I threaded through lunchtime traffic up to the University of Miami, parking outside the Sociology department. I jogged the steps to the third floor and found an empty reception office. Classes, I figured.

“Hello?” I called down a short hall with several doors. “Professor Johnson?”

A woman rolled out a door in a wheelchair. That was the first thing I noticed, the second was the eye patch. She was of African heritage and looked to be in her mid forties, moon faced. Her hair was long and braided with bright beads and she beckoned me to her office. “You must be Carson Ryder,” Victoree Johnson said in a voice infused with Caribbean rhythms.

“We were handling a case initially thought to be a serial killer, but Dr Morningstar—”

“She told me the details. Have a seat.”

I sat in a chair, she rolled around to face me. The office was small and jammed with books and bound reports.

“Was that your opinion, Professor?” I asked. “Human trafficking?”

“Hondurans, mostly female and too poor for regular dental work … add that to the quantity of bodies and I’d say it’s probable these people died together rather than being murdered by a maniac, though whoever trafficks in humans is as cold-blooded as any serial killer.”

“It looks like sixteen or seventeen people died. This has happened before?”

“In the Southwest it’s becoming common. As the borders tighten, the coyotes – human smugglers – turn to more desolate crossings, like the deserts. Remember the old westerns, Detective? The man on horseback in the desert looks down and sees a bleached cattle skull in the sand? Today he’s more likely to find a human skull.”

I suppressed a shudder. “Is there much trafficking in the US?” I asked, aware of my country’s often dishonorable trek from slavery to freedom.

“The US is not Eastern Europe, or Thailand, or Russia,” she said. “but if there are places where people, especially women, are used in vice, trafficking is there.”

“Trafficking for sex, then.”

“Sexual slavery is the mainstay of human trafficking in the US, women brought here as sex machines. They’re forced to work until they fall apart, at which point they’re replaced with another machine.”

“Are they kidnapped from their home countries?” I asked.

“Most are as willing as contestants on
American Idol
, seeing the US as offering money, a glamorous life, beautiful places to live, delicious foods in every direction. They’re easy prey for vultures who ply the villages, men who seek out youthful girls and boys with wide dreams. The typical line is that they get here and do some simple work – gardening, cleaning – for a couple months. After that they have no obligation.”

“The garden never appears.”

“They arrive to be told they owe thousands of dollars and can work it off with sex acts. Refusal brings beatings, rapes, starvation, drugging. The slaves are stripped of will and do as they’re told.”

“Why not go to the police?”

A sad headshake. “The law where these people come from is often corrupt and biased against the poor: They’re terrified of authority. Secondly, these are rural folks, highly religious and attuned to mores regarding purity. Though their debasement comes at the hands of others, they believe the fault is in them. The overwhelming shame is reflected in the suicide rate.”

“Given their daily horrors, I still can’t understand why more don’t just hail a cop cruiser. It’s got to be better than—”

Victoree Johnson reached forward and touched my knee, her eyes filled with quiet sorrow. “There’s another form of leverage. The worst form.”

I thought a moment and closed my eyes at the simplicity of the hold. “The old stand-by,” I sighed. “Threaten the family back in the home country.”

Johnson mimed waving a knife. “Do what we say or your mama loses an eye, a sister gets a nose cut off. It’s not a threat. Those who traffic in their fellow humans have no bottom.”

“How do they get here? It’s not as if there’s a thousand miles of border to cross, like with Mexico. South Florida’s surrounded by water.”

“Lately we’re hearing rumors of human cargo brought here in containerized shipping modules. They’re packed in like sardines.”

“Into a port as secure as Miami?” I’d read how Homeland Security had ramped up checkpoints and procedures after being called on lax security a few years back.

“I figure it’s bribery. It takes many people to secure a port, but only one or two highly positioned people to know when human cargo is arriving and pay eyes to look the other way.”

I nodded. It was the same with drugs. “Why might these people have died?” I asked, returning to the problem of the column. “There’s no desert in South Florida.”

“They could have come in on an old truck or boat and carbon monoxide leaked. It’s not without precedent. They might have been on a small boat that capsized, that’s happened with Cuban refugees. Or perhaps they were inadvertently poisoned with bad food, or smuggled in beside bags of poisonous chemicals in a shipping container.”

“But if these people are worth so much when they get here – working for sex – why not keep them safer on the journey?”

A sad smile. “You ever see a hog truck out on the road, Detective Ryder? How much protection does it get?”

“There are millions of pigs shipped every year.”

“Exactly,” Johnson said. “Who cares about one lousy shipment of bacon?”

“Did you make the delivery to Madame Cho?” Amili asked. She sat at her desk with laptop in hand. Orlando Orzibel lounged on the couch and pared his nails with his knife. The late morning sun had brightened the cloudless sky to a brilliant hue and clear light streamed through the window.

“I had Chaku run the product over.”

A raised eyebrow. “You did not go personally?”

“I prepare them, others deliver them,” Orzibel sniffed. “I am not Federal Express.”

“Who did you select?”

Orzibel frowned at the open window and strode over to pull the drapes, then returned to the couch. “Luisa Mendoza and Leala Rosales.”

“Were they ready?”

Orzibel waggled his hand,
so-so.
“As they ever are when they’re that fresh. But Cho is stern with training and discipline, so Leala and Luisa will soon be industrious little tug-job factories.”

“And Yolanda – how is she?”

“I don’t think medical attention is needed.”

“How long until she’s fully recovered?”

The unconcerned flick of a hand. “Does it matter? All expenses are paid by the client.”

“The freak.”

“Call him what you wish. I pad the doctor’s bill, of course,” Orzibel grinned. “We make more money when he hurts them.”

“No amount of money covers the risk.”

“What risk? Chaku stepped in when things got loud. The client was angry for the moment but thanked him later. He actually tipped Chaku for restraining him in his wilder impulses. Chaku said even he was frightened by the man’s … passions.”

Amili tapped at the laptop and frowned. “The freak is getting more passionate, Orlando. Two sessions last year, four already this year. Last year the girls returned frightened but not injured. This year Mr Chalk has hurt three, two quite badly.”

“He has the money to pay for his pleasure.” Orzibel paused and turned his gaze to Amili. “Once the client was in a clear mind, he wanted to have a discussion, to feel me out on a subject. He stepped into this particular pond very delicately, and when he knew he could trust me, we went swimming together.”

“Get to the point, please.”

Orzibel turned. “The client would like to purchase a girl, Amili.”

“He does. Several times a year.”

“You don’t understand, Amili. Mr Chalk does not intend to return the girl. It would be impossible.”

18

“How long since you checked table fourteen, Michael?”

Michael Ballentine and Alberto Fuentes spoke quietly and polished glassware behind the copper-clad bar in the Orchid Lounge, the main watering hole in one of the premier hotels in Key West. Far from the din and tumult of Duval Street, the hotel was near the airport, nestled amidst stately king palms and lush, multitiered landscaping that provided a buffer between the hotel and the highway.

Ballentine glanced at his watch. “Eight minutes. I’ll head over soon. They’re guzzling hard tonight.”

“They had a shitty golf round,” Fuentes speculated, drawing on two decades of experience. “Or the market dropped.”

The Orchid was dark, candles flickering on tables and in booths cushioned with red leather, the candles in crystal chimneys. It was before the dinner hour and a dozen customers populated the lounge, businessmen mostly, talking business and golf.